IVOA Grid & Web Services: Web service interoperability

Overview

Web services are supposed to be capable of interoperating, i.e. the same client can call different instances of a particular service or one service can another service, without any difficulty. Unfortunately, it turns out that this is not the case, which is why the Web Services Interoperability (WS-I) Organisation was formed to provide a set of guidelines (called profiles) on how to be interoperable. The minimum requirements are defined in the WS-I Basic Profile.

VO Web Services Basic Profile Proposal

The sections of WS-I Basic Profile that are relevant for the IVOA have been specified in the VO Web Service Basic Profile proposal. This document describes rules to take into account when implementing (SOAP-based) web services. It also explains how to check the conformance to these rules.